


in this broken world we choose

by strikinglight



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/F, Friendship/Love, POV Second Person, Relationship Study, Slow Burn, albeit very subtly, big fat pre- to immediately postcanon timeline orz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 03:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13732368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/strikinglight
Summary: You do not know how this happened in the seven years you have had each other—and you recognize it for what it is, something powerful and terrifying and utterly unwise—but in the face of everything that might come, the truth is that she is your protector, and you are hers.





	in this broken world we choose

**Author's Note:**

> This monstrosity, fondly known as _The Maelica Epic_ because it sprawls everywhere and has also been in my brain for pretty much ever, is sort of for FEmslash February, but it's mainly a passion project that I ended up getting inspiration for at a fortuitous time. Immediately after finishing SOV I knew I wanted to go deep into an exploration of Celica's character to tie up the loose ends that we never quite saw resolved in-text—which would explain why this fic is maybe 60% Celica Character Study, laughcrying—and, well, how better to do that than go deep into a simultaneous exploration of her relationship with Mae, which is absolutely precious.
> 
> I take Celica into some pretty Dark mind-spaces especially in the latter parts (most of which take place around Act 4 of the in-game timeline, where stuff on her end is, needless to say, extremely messy), so I guess I should warn for that? But she comes out of it very much stronger in the end, as you will see.
> 
> Title from "Shine" by Vienna Teng, which is in many ways the theme song of this fic. Special thanks to Winny, who is always with me, and to Nico and Gwen. You guys are awesome for enduring my flailing and my frantic snippet-sending and I am so certain I would not have made it through this monstrosity of a second person POV oneshot without your encouragement. Special thanks also to Mom and Babby for flailing with me even sans Fire Emblem context-knowledge. Many thanks and many love all around /prayer hands emoji

 

 _I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow,  
_ _and somehow, each of us will help the other live_

_\- Adrienne Rich_

 

**i.**

You are ten years old when you first come to the island.

Grandpapa’s been reminding you since you left the village to be quiet and speak to no one, to keep the hood of your cloak up and your head down. You have played this running and hiding game with him enough times to want to obey. The difficulty lies in averting your eyes from the things that invade your vision without you having to look for them—the torches lining the pier, the moon and stars, the silvery foam on the waves that roil and lap at the sides of the great ship.

The girl you see sitting atop the outer wall of the priory the morning you arrive is this, too, yet another bright thing that catches and pulls at you. In the yellow light her bare legs kick against the stones and swing back and forth; she leans forward, one hand braced by her side, the other shading her eyes as she peers up the road. There’s something that looks like a pair of goose feathers stuck into her ponytail.

She must see the two of you round the bend, the old man atop his tall horse, the little girl held before him in the saddle. You are uncertain if she sees you watching her in return, tilting your head to one side just so, eyes keen for all the shadows your hood casts. Whatever she sees makes her pull her legs back up and over the wall, and she drops down behind it, out of sight.

“There are many children your age here,” Grandpapa remarks. His eyes are forward, always forward, but no doubt he has seen the girl too. “You won’t lack for company, Celica.”

“I know” is all you can say. There had been children your age at Ram, and you still have dreams about how they might have died in the skirmish that forced you from the village. There had been children your age at the villa, too, before that; brothers and sisters older and younger, so distant from you now their names and faces have already begun crumbling to ash in your memory.

The priest who meets you at the gate is older and softer than Grandpapa, long-robed and long-haired, with kind eyes. He tells you his name is Nomah, and he assures you that you will be happy here. Most importantly, you will be safe.

You already know Grandpapa will not stay with you this time. When he dismounts and kneels to say goodbye to you, down on one knee at the end of the dirt path, he does not tell you how long it will be for. He asks only that you promise to be good.

“I will,” you promise. You ask no questions of your own before you let Nomah usher you in past the gate, and do your best not to turn over your shoulder when you hear it close behind you. You are well past tears at this point—you already know more than a few things about parting, young as you are—but your eyes burn a little, nevertheless, and your throat is tight and dry as you walk up the path.

The goose feather girl is sweeping the entrance hall when you come in, though as you blink the sunlight out of your eyes you can tell it’s less sweeping and more gliding the broom restlessly across the floor for lack of anything better to do. She straightens up as soon as she sees you, standing at attention with one hand around the broom handle, looking for all the world like a soldier with her lance at the ready—and this is the first time you’ve thought of soldiers and wanted to laugh, somehow, instead of cry.

“Ah, there you are, little one!” Nomah smiles, patting the top of her head. She stands up even straighter under his hand, fond and proud, but her eyes are on you. “Celica, this here is Mae, a novice of ours. Mae, this is Celica, come to us from the mainland.” You note the care with which he introduces you—just by your name and nothing else—but the way Mae nods her head gives you the impression she already knows it. It strikes you then that possibly they’ve been talking about you; maybe she’s known you were coming before you ever even boarded your boat. “I must return to my prayers, but she’ll show you to your room, and see to anything else you might need for the meantime.”

You look at Mae again, wondering. She must indeed be about your age—but taller than you, and gangly, with knobby knees and elbows that stick out every which way. The feathers in her hair flutter as she moves. When she speaks there is so much voice in her it seems to fill the hall to the rafters.

“This way, Celica!” she says, leaning her broom against the wall and grabbing your hand before you can speak. As you leave Nomah’s side and follow her through the warren of corridors, hanging back a few steps instead of drawing up to walk by her side, you wonder if this is an assigned task. It would explain how she knows which room is meant to be yours, if not her ready smile, the spring in her step like she’s been waiting all day for _this_ moment.

Your room—that is, the room meant for you—is small and spare, unfurnished but for a little table and chair and a shelf and a pallet bed in an alcove. The sheets and blankets when you run your hand over them are plain undyed cotton. That suits you well enough. You don’t miss the embroidered silks and damasks of your earliest childhood.

On the far wall is a big arched window through which the sunshine streams unencumbered by curtains. You decide you don’t mind this, either. Drapes can catch fire, after all. At the very least, they collect dust.

“It’s not much,” Mae says behind you. When you turn around you see her rocking back and forth on her heels just shy of the threshold, hands politely behind her back as though she's reluctant to impose herself. She seems softer in here, the brassy exuberance tempered somehow by the quiet of the inner corridors. “But the bed’s comfy when you get used to it, and the garden will be a lot prettier in the springtime, when all the flowers come out.”

You know exactly why she's hovering here—trying not to intrude, trying to make you feel at home. “What sorts of flowers are there?”

“Oh, different kinds! Like, _tons.”_ So invited, Mae comes to stand beside you at the window. Her newly restored enthusiasm belies the severely clipped hedges you see when you look outward together—the dark leaves, the tree branches all spindly and bare. “Tulips and irises and lilac. White roses on the bushes there. And daisies, lots of daisies. When the weather starts getting nice again Nomah lets my friend Boey and me go out with Silque to weed the garden. You could come with us next time, Celica.” She bounces a little on the balls of her feet, already excited for this chore that must still be months away yet. “Silque’s one of the older girls. She’s studying healing, so she knows everything about plants and what they need, and she’s so, _so_ kind. You’ll like her, I think.”

You hum your assent softly as you nod along, letting her chatter break like a wave over you. You have no doubt, suddenly, that you _will_ like Silque, and the garden in the spring, and weeding. You already know you like Mae, even if you're not sure how wise that is, after everything. You sort of have no choice in the matter. You haven’t needed to know her more than an hour to know that something in you has already begun to lean toward her—an iris, maybe, or a daisy, or a white rose toward the sun.

“Hey, Celica?” You’ve noticed she says your name often, like she’s settling into the shape and sound of it.

“Hmm?”

“My room’s right at the end of the hall. You ever need anything, anything at all, just let me know.” Grinning, she tilts her head a little closer to you. In a whisper that tells you she's letting you in on a secret, she says, “Cook lets me have the leftover fruit sometimes when she’s making jam or marmalade. I could get some for you, if you like fruit.”

As it happens, you love fruit. You turn to smile at her, and wonder if that, too, is something she somehow already knows, by magic.

“Thank you, Mae.”

 

* * *

 

**ii.**

You have known since you arrived on the island that you would be forbidden to leave it for the rest of the foreseeable future. Most days you accept this without complaint; the days Boey and Mae are sent to the mainland without you are the only exception.

It doesn’t happen often, maybe once every month or so. They board the morning ferry to Zofia harbor with some task or other and come back at nightfall. Each time they return with stories, eager and bright-eyed but also somehow shamefaced, if only because they know stories are poor compensation for all the adventure you’ve missed out on. But you tell them you’re grateful for every one—even more so for the occasional souvenir besides, when one of them has a coin to spare for some spun sugar or almonds or even a small wood carving, because they always insist they’d as soon spend it on a present for you than on anything else they might want—and keep the longing to yourself.

You are fourteen when they’re sent to the greatport on Midsummer Day, not for an errand this time but for a festival both of them swear they don’t _really_ want to attend. It’s Boey’s older sisters who want to dance around the great fire the villagers light every year in the square; as their brother he’s duty-bound to go along with them to ensure they come home at dusk like they’re supposed to, and as a friend Mae is duty-bound to talk to Boey when he gets bored after the first hour, like he is so sure he will.

“Just have fun,” you tell them, mildly, ladling porridge into their bowls as they sit yawning at the breakfast table. “You can tell me all about it later when you come home.”

“It’s not going to be the same without you, Celica,” Mae whines. She’s blowing on her spoon as she says it, one puff of air every few words. “I _so_ wish you could come with us.”

 _I do, too,_ you almost say. Instead you offer to wash their bowls for them so they won’t be late to the harbor. While they are gone you busy yourself with teaching little Genny a new spell and helping Silque dust the shelves in the library, and try not to brood too long about how the glimpses of sky you snatch through the windows are so much bluer than you remember them being yesterday.

You know the absence is temporary; you think yourself silly because it’s not even very _long,_ and anyway there are more important things to think about than loneliness.

You are lighting the candles in the entrance hall when you hear their voices again. Mae’s voice, rather, hurrying Boey up the path—“Get a move on, slowpoke, Celica’s waiting!”—and then they are bursting through the doors, falling one over the other in their hurry to get to you. And there’s something else, some other noise you don’t recognize—a jangling sound—

“Celica, we—”

“Mae, your elbow—”

“—dancing, wanted to get—”

“Ouch! Gods, that was my foot—”

“—bring this home for you!” Mae finishes, bent nearly double with Boey’s arm slung across her shoulders and her hands on her knees. She’s barely even gotten her breath back when she shakes him off her, poking him sharply in the side for good measure. “Show her, Boey!”

The thing in question is a wooden hoop with canvas stretched over it like a drumhead, tied to his belt with a length of twine. He undoes the knots and offers it to you, and immediately you hear the jangling again, see something glint silver in the candlelight. You need to take it in your hands and peer closer to see the pairs of metal discs fitted into the frame, two by two, all the way around.                                                

“What’s...?”

“It’s called a timbrel. The dancing girls at the square all had them. Mae wanted—” Boey’s cheeks are ruddy—with fatigue from the day, possibly, and no small measure of embarrassment at the sentiment. He scratches restively at the back of his neck. Clears his throat, tries again. “We wanted to bring you the dance, in a way. Sort of. I suppose.”

“Boey bummed a whole silver mark off his sisters to get it for you,” Mae pipes up, beaming, and ignores his sidelong glare. “It’s super easy to play, you just kind of... shake it and bang it around, you know? You’ll get the hang of it in no time, and we can have a dance right here!” It’s only after she realizes that you haven’t said anything that she slows, regards you with a spark of uncertainty in her eyes that looks so completely wrong on her face. “I mean, if you want to? But maybe you’re tired, or...?”

You blink, and realize your eyes are wet. “I want to.” It comes out in barely a whisper. You take a breath, and begin again more strongly as you offer the instrument back to them. “Show me how?”

Boey takes the timbrel and Mae your two hands. There is the candlelight, golden on your friends’ faces. When you see the entrance hall all lit up with their smiles you remember—Midsummer Day is the longest day of the year. The one day so full of light it’s as if the sun won’t ever set again.

Part of you wonders if you’ll be embarrassed later, once the noise has brought Nomah out of the cloister and Genny out of the kitchen where she’s supposed to be helping put the soup on, and maybe Silque too, out of the library’s impenetrable silence. Another part—closer to the surface, for once, on this far from ordinary day—has already stepped into the dance.

“Come on,” Mae says, holding you even as she’s already begun to twirl and stamp her feet. You laugh when you realize she needs to stand up on tiptoe to turn you under her arm—it’s only this past summer you’ve outgrown her, and though it’s not by more than half a handspan she jokingly begrudges you every inch. “Follow me.”

You do. You let yourself go, and follow her.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  

You know the land has begun to fail when the trees refuse to bear fruit.

Nomah does not tell you—to spare you the fear, perhaps, or to cover up his own—but you see the leaves going yellow out of season and can tell there will barely be a harvest this year. The fishermen put out to sea twice as frequently, and you and your friends spend your days preparing the share of the catch that comes every day to the priory, deboning and filleting and salting and drying. Nights, you go out into the orchard with a lantern, wandering among the dying like the priestess you are, laying your hand against a shriveled trunk here, a snapped branch there; sometimes this is cause enough to wonder if you've somehow grown too soft for this world.

You find Mae there, sitting between the roots of her favorite apple tree one night in the late summer, when the days have only just begun shrinking. Autumn is harvest season, the most fertile time of year. The irony that a full year has come and gone since you last saw an apple on the branch in this orchard is not lost on you.

“Sorry, Celica.” Mae is tenderhearted yet and not yet past weeping. You don’t even need to lift your lantern to see her red eyes and her splotchy face, and the damp trails on her cheeks that shine in the flickering light. “It’s just—the trees... it’s all so sad.”

“I know.”

It must be the saddest thing in the world, if it’s made Mae shed the armor of her exuberance, even here in the dark where no one ever goes. You look at her, and then at the tree, strong and stout in the trunk and with low-hanging branches perfect for climbing. When you touch the wood you feel its life, the quiet heartbeat of it already on the ebb even as it reaches out toward Mae, fighting to hang on.

 _Please._ It’s harder than you remember to reach inside yourself and give of your spirit to nourish this one tree—something in you wilting too, _no, no_ —but you summon what power you have at hand. When you are done you find the pulse you feel has strengthened, the leaves overhead gone more green than yellow, if only for a while.

You already know it is nowhere near enough. But it will be enough for Mae, or at least she will tell you so, and you can both continue to pretend a little longer that you are strong.

“Do you think something’s happened to the Mother?”

“I was thinking I might go to the temple, to ask her myself.”

You had been hoping not to have to say it, but Mae has this way of voicing things the moment she thinks of them, leaving no room at all for denial. But has there ever been any, to begin with? You can sense your prayers are hollow these days even if you do not know why, even if you kneel long hours on the bare stones of the chapel until your knees are raw.

You cannot bring yourself to ask her to come with you, but likewise you cannot deny how badly you want it, because it is too easy in these times to remember how little you’ve seen of the world. There are so many things that could go wrong on a journey of the kind you’ve only ever read about in stories; so many ways you could lose her and so many things you cannot tell her, and yet somehow abiding over all of these things is the fear of going forth alone, one without the other. You do not know how this happened in the seven years you have had each other—and you recognize it for what it is, something powerful and terrifying and utterly unwise—but in the face of everything that might come, the truth is that she is your protector, and you are hers.

“Let me come,” she says, suddenly fierce for all the tears still standing in her eyes, and reaches toward you. You don’t release her once she’s back on her feet, but it’s difficult to say who exactly is refusing to let go of whom. “At least to Nomah. You’ve got to ask for permission, right?”

You do not tell her that you were only waiting for her to offer. Maybe your hand will say it for you, as you intertwine your fingers in hers and the two of you begin to make your way back the way you came, side by side through the dark, toward home.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  

“You really are something else, do you know that?”

Even immobilized like this, having just been ordered summarily into a chair to better allow you to treat his injured shoulder, Leon has a smart mouth. One of the first things you’ve learned about him is that his clapbacks are quicker even than his shots, with power to spare—that they are sharp enough to cut more deeply, if he sets his mind to it, right to the hearts of things.

“I used to be a soldier, see.” He undoes the fastenings of his shirt halfway down and pulls his right arm gingerly out of its sleeve, wincing at having to lift it above shoulder height. You suspect it’s a pulled muscle from an overdrawn bow, a common injury incurred by archers who let their form go in a fight, and Leon had had his friend Valbar’s back to cover all through the battle that eventually won you control of this keep. His good humor at least must be untouched, if he’s feeling chatty. “I was just thinking you’re nothing like my old commanders.”

“Oh?” You incline your head politely, giving him your full attention even as you place your hand on his upper back and send your magic in to mend the joint. You can already sense the torn strands beneath the skin, well-exercised and strong, knitting readily together again. “What were your old commanders like?”

“Mostly they used to lead from above. They’d never walk among the men and dirty their hands, like—ah, lovely.” You let go of him, and he rolls the injured shoulder first forward, then backward, then forward again, clearly pleased with your handiwork. Then without warning he fixes you with his eyes, quick and keen and pointed as one of those arrows of his. “You’re going to get people dying for you if you aren’t careful, priestess.”

You fall silent at that, contemplating your hands—which to your credit are only moderately dirty, your gloves rimed with salt from so much time on the sea. When you set out from Novis you would never have thought to call what you were doing _leading,_ in any sense of the word _,_ and even now you are more comfortable thinking of everyone who has taken up with your party since then as journeying alongside you, rather than following. It’s true that you’ve bought their loyalty with gold first and later with gratitude, but you’re not so proud as to think that choice has anything to do with _you._ You think it must have everything to do with them, these men, each of whom is kinder than he says he is, in his own rough-hewn plainspoken way.

And then there is Leon, who misses nothing, whom you’ve decided you like in spite of all his sharpness, because you already know he’ll never be false with you. You’ve only known him barely a day and already you know this; he’s too true to himself to be so dishonest with anybody else.

“That one, for instance. She’d die for you in a second,” he continues. As he does up his shirt again his gaze slides past you, toward the back of the hall. “The boy too, I think, and the little girl. But no one more than that one.”

You follow more slowly, until Mae comes into your peripheral vision, bickering laughingly with the mercenary Kamui by the treasury door. You can’t quite make out their conversation—you think you hear the words _treasure,_ _rightful—_ and anyway even those trace bits disappear too soon, and you are left only with the way Mae lights up when she sees you looking, and then all of a sudden you are smiling and you cannot help it.

“Mae is one of my oldest friends.”

“That’s one way to call it, I suppose.” Leon snorts, eyes shining like he can see clean through you.

You look back at him calmly, and say nothing about the way the heart in your chest has begun to stutter, skipping first one beat, and then another.

 

* * *

 

**v.**

“You were tearing up when we left the castle,” Mae says. “Why?”

She speaks slowly, like she’s been mulling over this for some time; for someone like Mae, whose thoughts are almost always out of her mouth the second they’re fully formed in her head, this restraint must have taken more out of her than you know. Already you are so grateful for the effort you refuse to diminish it with an outright denial; you owe it to her, at the very least, to try and tell her _something._

Mae is on the pre-dawn leg of the night watch, and you are keeping her company because you woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep no matter how you tried. It’s not so much watching as walking circles around the perimeter of your camp, following the torches; the desert makes vigilance easy, stretches and stretches of sand unfurling like a tapestry on every side, bright moon overhead turning the world silver. Even you are confident anything that might want to attack you would cast a shadow a mile long.

The ease of the patrol does mean, though, that there’s no excuse not to do other things. No reason not to talk. But Mae is your best friend and there’s no reason for you to shy from talking to her in the first place. That is what you tell yourself, at least.

“The friend I went to see,” you begin, tentative, and immediately hesitate as you struggle to find words for what happened. “We had a—a disagreement, I guess you could call it.”

“Oh,” says Mae. She chews on this awhile. You can already sense that she’s deliberately being careful, reining in the desire to ask more, and you feel the gratitude swell again behind the doors of your heart. “Was it a big disagreement?”

At the time it had felt like everything. That is the whole truth, but that is also more than you know how to say. “I think so. We don’t... believe the same things anymore. If we ever did, I’m not sure.”

No one knows the whole story yet, though your friends have tried to tease it out of you with questions and pointed looks. Each time find you can only ever bring yourself to say a little, to come at the memories at an angle that doesn’t hurt too sharply—even here, even to someone like Mae. You can at least manage the part where you say the boy who now stands at the head of Zofia’s armies is your oldest friend, and the part where you are eager to see him after seven years of separation. Like always, you leave out the part where you beg him not to go to war. Also the part where you tell him he knows nothing, and the part where you see him backlit by a red sun with his hands clenched by his sides in anger and realize there are so many things about him that you cannot for the life of you recognize.

Maybe you, too, know nothing. Maybe you’re wrong to feel so uprooted. After all, seven years is a long time.

The wind picks up, stirring your hair and carrying the wisps of cloud across the sky, away from the moon. The stars are brighter here in the desert than you’ve ever seen them. More often than not, you’ve taken comfort in the stars—how it’s always the same ones that shine down on the world, night after night, as sentimental as the idea of such constancy might seem now—but on long sad nights like this one all they make you think of is distance.

“Hey, Celica?”

“Yes?”

“D’you remember when we were like twelve, and we had that big fight about...” Mae screws up her brow, searching her memory. “Ah, Mother Mila’s wings, what was it...”

“Was it the time we found that litter of newborn kittens in the garden?” Somehow you know exactly which fight she’s talking about, though you cannot tell if that means your fights over the years have truly been so rare, or so outstanding, or both. Either way, this is one you smile to remember. “You were so convinced their mother had abandoned them, and that we should bring them inside.”

“And _you_ said we shouldn’t!” Mae grins. “Gosh, was I mad at you.”

And she had been. For close to half an hour she’d flat-out refused to listen to you, try however you might to reason with her that sometimes mother cats went to hunt and left their kittens in safe places, that she wouldn’t go to them if she returned and smelled humans around their lair, that kittens that young were difficult, practically impossible to hand-feed. So many _buts—But what if she’s not_ coming _back, Celica? But what if they need our help?_ In the end she had called you impossible and heartless, stomped out of your room in a huff, and not spoken to you for the rest of the day. Never mind that you watched them through your window for the better part of an hour, turning the pages of the book in your lap without reading it, until at last you saw the mother cat come back.

Neither Boey nor Genny could get her to talk to you again, no matter how much they scolded and pleaded and cajoled. Looking back on it, at least you hadn’t needed Nomah to intercede for you, but going to Silque for help was humiliating enough—holding her hand and standing in the doorway of Mae’s room, feeling five years old again, listening to her gentle voice break you both down into pieces the other person could understand.

_Of course it’s good to help when someone needs you, but sometimes you need patience to know how best you can help. I promise it’s not so hard to meet in the middle as you might think._

When you finally made up that night it had felt like your friendship could weather anything. It feels like another life now, absurdly enough, a time when you and Mae couldn’t read each other right on the first try. You promise yourself you’ll never take that for granted—you could never take anything about her for granted—but now you discover you don’t know how to tell her she’s too good to you, sometimes. Too quick to meet you where you are, and to forgive the parts she doesn’t quite understand.

“Listen, this friend of yours—he’s definitely a good person, if he’s your friend, right? Because _you,_ missy, have got to be one of the best people I know.” She reaches for your hand and squeezes hard, grinning, and you want so much in this moment to feel completely, unquestionably safe. You know this too is what she wants for you, even if deserving it is another matter entirely. “So, don’t worry too much, ‘cause you’re both good people, okay?”

“I hope so,” you say. And just this once, suspended in the desert’s silence and watched only by the stars and the sand, you allow yourself to lean your head against her shoulder, and close your eyes.

 

* * *

 

**vi.**

The paintings of Mila’s temple that covered the walls of the priory had made you believe it was the most beautiful place in the world. Coming to it for the first time you realize what it means to look at a place and see its shadow instead; the spiked barricades, the cracked marble, the wind sighing between the pillars with such a wordless, impossible sadness. And the women, milling together under every crumbling arch like shades, who to the last look at you as though they are counting on you to save them when their goddess could not.

You had hoped your journey would end here. You know that later you will struggle not to think it all a nightmare. Here, now, you are awake and standing in the rubble, and a knight whose face you’ve never seen but whose voice you somehow recognize is asking you if you are ready to ascend your throne.

There is moss growing between the stones, you think. There is algae in the water. Everything about this is wrong. You know little of kingdoms, when all is said and done, or what it means to rule; all you know is that you cannot go back, and that there are people you wish to protect. That is all you have. That is all you have ever had, and yet the knight says it is enough.

You do not know that it is enough, when you cannot see the way forward. There is a crown on your head, golden and heavy and beautiful, and you see your friends kneeling and want to beg them to get up and look at you, to walk beside you, to tell you you will not face this alone. In the same breath, to leave you—leave you and be safe.

“You look so beautiful, Celica.”

The only one who seems to hear you at all is Mae, who is first on her feet. Mae, who has known who you are all this time, and you are tempted for a moment—but that moment is everything—to cross the ruined floor and pull her into your arms and let her protect you from the thousand eyes that are on you now, waiting for what you will do. Watching, always watching.

Mae is smiling at you. Her face crumples when Boey elbows her in the side, reminds her she ought to call you by your real name now.

“Celica is just fine,” you tell them, in a voice that does not tremble.

 

* * *

 

**vii.**

As Mila’s priestess your first duty is to the poor, and the weak, and the wounded. As her self-appointed rescuer you’ve seen enough of this last one on your journey that your comrades’ injuries shouldn’t scare you anymore. You can do what you know, stitching up cuts, setting a fractured bone, summoning up your magic to restore the strength of these broken bodies that you have allowed to become dear to you because you do not know better, even after all this time.

And yet something inside you had cracked in Dolth Keep, when Saber and Mae had stepped forward to shield you from the cantor—from his words as much as from his spells. Now the battle is behind you and your forces have settled at the edge of the forest that will lead you to the Sage’s Hamlet, but the battle is in you, too, and there has no end. Now you walk shaken and hollowed out from end to end of your camp, replacing still-fresh bandages and mixing more ointment than you need, the voice of Dolth’s dead spirit in your ear telling you that everyone you walk with will die because of you. You could buy their safety with your life; instead you insist on leading them into darkness, farther and farther, until—

“Shush, lass,” Saber says, like he can hear your thoughts, when you take his arm to check how the burns on it are healing. It must be the tenth, the twelfth time; each time you’ve been convinced you need to touch him to believe. “It’ll take more than a little magic to kill me, don’t you fear.”

His good hand on the back of yours is gentle—as if you are the brittle one, the one whose body is falling apart. Saber is the strangest person you have ever met because since you met he has sworn up and down that he will leave you the second he feels this little jaunt of yours is more trouble than it’s worth. But somehow in your time together you have taken down pirates and a bandit king, and you journey now to rescue a goddess, and still he has not left you. You feel sick with dread whenever you begin to wonder just how much he thinks you’re worth.

You look over at Mae, who is resting supine on the ground with Boey’s cloak rolled up and stuck under her head for a pillow, as Genny tends her burns with honey and aloe leaves and the white light that pours from her hands when she prays. It’s not the first time you’ve thought that you regret your own less potent healing powers—you might do something for the pain, but cannot mend the flesh as you’ve seen Genny do, purging the taint of the dark magic and spelling it back to life, healthy and whole—but that’s the price you pay, for the strength to fight.

Mae’s eyes are closed. You have already begun to wonder how many nights you will wake splintered from your sleep, remembering the ropes of fire coursing up her arm, her shoulder. The impact had thrown her backward against you and you had felt your heart uproot from your chest as you held her, the voice of your heart screaming _Mae, Mae, Mae,_ the voice of your body dead in your throat.

“Why don’t you go for a walk.” Saber again, hand on your shoulder this time. “I’ll come find you when she wakes.”

 _No,_ you almost say. _I can’t leave her._ But it’s not a question, so you thank him and go.

You don’t wander far—just under the trees, a little ways outside of camp. There is a lushness to this forest that you would never have thought possible for Rigel, which the legends of your childhood had painted into a bare-bones, fetid wasteland. The storytellers had certainly spared no expense; year-round snow, earth so barren it might have been solid rock, fell spirits in the marshes and cruelty in the eyes and hearts of men. And while even as a child you had known better than to believe them, you certainly would not have been able to conceive of anything like the still, hazy beauty of this place, where the mist takes the sharp edges off everything and blurs every tree branch to softness.

“Anthiese?”

When you hear the name— _your_ name, except it’s a name that for years has been tucked away in a dark place, emerging now so old and covered in dust you barely remember it belongs to you—you turn. If Conrad has been following you it looks only partly intentional; it is equally possible that he’s simply meandered in this direction, looking at you with the doleful expression of a little boy who’s lost his way. When you pair that face with the full suit of armor and the longsword hanging by his side, the image is almost comical; you’re certain you would laugh if you didn’t feel it twist at your heart.

“Is everything all right, Conrad?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just, you looked about to go off on your own again, and I...” He trails off, sheepish, fiddling with his hands and unable to meet your gaze. “It scared me a little, I suppose.”

Poor Conrad. When you look at him part of you still sees the child who startled at shadows and loud noises, whose fear of the dark always brought him close to tears; you remember too well what it was like to go about the villa with his fist in the back of your dress, always two steps behind you, always wanting to go where you went. You know he is more than this now, in ways that still astound you when you think about them, beyond the mask and the shining armor and the lance he can lift one-armed. You know full well that this Conrad would not hesitate, for all his fear, to step bodily between you and anything that would seek to harm you. Perhaps even including yourself.

There are so many questions you want to ask him. It feels cruel that the one closest to the surface is the one you will not ever ask, a lingering acid-burn in the back of your mouth: _Are you brave enough now to lose me a second time?_

You are aware, too aware, that one day you may have to hurt him this way. Maybe even one day soon. But that day is not come yet, and surely, here under the trees in the only place where you don’t feel the earth dying beneath your feet and the air filling up with poison every moment, every second—surely here, you can lay your burdens aside.

“Will you sit with me here?” You try to smile. “I would love to talk with you awhile.”

“Nothing would make me happier, sister.” You can see from the way his face brightens what it must mean to him, to finally say the word and feel it cut through the years of terror that you and he would never find each other again. And something in you likewise goes soft when you hear it— _sister, sister—_ so soft and weak and tender, even though the terror never stops.

Conrad takes the cape from his shoulders with a gallantry you would never have expected from him, lays it on the ground for you to sit on. When he settles beside you, cross-legged in the grass, you almost believe it would be possible to forget.

 

* * *

 

**viii.**

From the beginning you were trained to mercy, but you know that taking those you hold most dear to the top of Duma Tower and forcing them to watch you give up your life is the cruelest thing you will ever do. It is also, in all likelihood, the last thing, for all the comfort that brings.

You want to say you had no choice. That possibly you’ve never had a choice—your life is the brand in your right palm, the name you were given when you were born, these things that leave you cold even as they are the only things that will help you save this world. You want to say this sacrifice is the only meaning your life has anymore.

But you cannot say this, because you know they love you enough that they would deny it to the last. In the end you can only look them in the face one by one and say you are sorry, you are sorry, their pain is yours, you don’t know how else to tell them how precious they are. You can’t even look long, because it only stands to reason that Jedah doesn’t give you time to say goodbye.

Your eyes burn, but you force yourself to keep looking, to fix their faces in your mind before they disappear.

Mae is the last. You want her to be angry with you, like you deserve. You want her to tell you you’ve sold her out. But all she does is look back at you like you’ve broken her heart.

“Celica—” she starts to say. And then in a puff of smoke and a burst of venomous purple light she is gone.

 

* * *

 

**ix.**

You think you are dead, but then you realize you can still hear—there is the ring of swords against one another, again and again and again. And Alm crying. Alm will not stop crying.

Your body is not your own anymore but you discover your voice is when you beg him to kill you, to stop this, to save himself. He is your oldest friend and to ask this of him is almost more than you can bear, but there is another voice—a dark voice that is also yours, the dead spirit at your shoulder whispering that this is your singular talent, is it not, Celica, are you not a master now of hurting the ones you love?

The blade bites. You do not feel the pain. You do not see the blood, only the burst of light that engulfs the body that is no longer yours. You do not expect to ever wake again and yet you do, even if you cannot say how long it has been or where you are, what this strange, soft, white between-place is.

Mila is there, cradling you in her arms like a child, and you find you are not so alarmed by this as you probably would be if you were still alive. Indeed you have begun to wonder if no longer being alive has taken your ability to feel anything at all.

“Your time has not yet come.”

Perhaps not. No sooner has she spoken than you feel the exhaustion wash over you unchecked, that cold and gnawing heaviness that you never say anything about, no matter how persistently it wears at you, no matter how it drags at your limbs. Now you are floating in the void apart from the world you know and it is easier than you ever remember it being, to simply say what you mean. “I am so tired, Mila.”

“I know,” she says, so divine and glittering and composed you almost forget she is dying too. The calm in her voice jars you, forces you onto your feet and out of her hold, so that you stand and face her.

 _What could you possibly know?_ You had never known the questions were there until this moment, but without warning, something akin to anger flares like a star in your chest. You think of the years, the running and hiding, the sun through windows you were never allowed to open. You think of Alm swinging the sword, tears on his face—of dead trees and fire and war, and the salvation of the world, too big for your small hands. It is nearly enough to make you feel alive again. _How could you possibly understand?_

“I have tried to do right by you all my life,” you tell her. You hate the way your voice shakes, but you press on. “I have—I fought for you. To the last. Even when I couldn’t see the way ahead, and had no idea why, why—”

_Why you chose me. What it was all for._

There is no anger waiting to answer you on the other side. All she does is listen, hands folded—still so patient, still so utterly inscrutable. And then she asks, “What do you want, Celica?”

She calls you by your name. Against your will you soften, unclenching your hands, hanging your head. Like you are eight and not newly turned eighteen, like you are guilty of some mischief you cannot hope to hide from your mother who sees everything. “For all this to end. To live in peace with the people I love.”

“And you think you cannot have that? Do you truly think yourself so alone?”

Only rarely have you allowed yourself to think about the life you wish you had. It is a life you have glimpsed only rarely through the years, in moments you don’t expect—moments of laughter and dancing and sweet, short-lived forgetfulness. It is in the memory of candlelight on your brother’s hair and the shapes of the small houses at Ram. It is in the sound of the timbrel, and in the flowers blooming in the priory gardens, and in the steady push and pull of the blue tide. You have held every fragment close and prayed in silence, _maybe someday, maybe someday._

“It is... not so easy as you think.” You mean to say you cannot simply will your hope to be stronger than fear, when you do not know who will still be waiting to receive you if you do return.

“How little faith you have in those who love you, child.” She must see something in your face that makes her smile—and she looks, all of a sudden, more human than you could ever have imagined. “Look at you, so concerned with being deserving. Do the fish deserve the sea? Do the birds deserve the branches they come to rest on?” Your mouth must have dropped open, gaping like one of her fish, because she reaches out and taps at your chin gently with two fingers. “I thought you might have learned a little more about gratitude by now.”

Gratitude. A memory unbidden: Mae, pushing the gift of a carved wooden cat into your hands. It is the winter solstice and you are eleven and it is the first of many gifts she will give you—and try as you might to return it, or refuse it, or say you couldn’t possibly, she will not stop until you accept.

_Gosh, Celica, just take it and say thank you. What are best friends for, anyway?_

All these years you have kept that cat on the desk in your room, and it has been special to you even as the wooden surface has filled up with other trinkets from Boey and Mae, souvenirs of all their small journeys. A wooden bird, a bracelet made of seashells, a teacup, a cloth rose, each little thing a sign that they never stop thinking of you. For years those were the first things you saw when you opened your eyes in the morning, the last things before you closed them at night.

“What would you have me do?”

“If you _choose_ to return,” Mila says. When she reaches out you give her your right hand, and as she cradles it in her own you file away in your memory the sensation of her cool, smooth skin and her long fingernails, pointed and gentle at once. You know she is telling you she will help you not forget again. “I would only have you remake the world as you see fit, my dear. It is for you, and will always be for you.”

Even her voice is not enough to banish the fear. You still feel it at your back, waiting for you, a cold hand between your shoulderblades, a black voice in your inner ear still whispering that you cannot possibly do right by the world and yourself as well, that when you leave this place the Mother will be dead and you will never see her again, and you will be alone as you always were.

The fear is still there. But you know—or rather, you remember—who will help you bear it now.

“Will you go to meet them?”

All around you the whiteness is shifting, becoming less flat. Less like a void, more like a corridor, at the end of which is a door of light. And beyond the light, voices you know.

“I will,” you say. Smiling, she releases you. You turn from her and begin to walk, knowing that at the end of the path there will be nothing left to do but allow yourself to fall.

_A warm wind. Hands reaching. Voices you know._

“Celica!”

 

* * *

 

**x.**

If there are ever songs written about the last battle you ever fought, you are certain they will leave out the part where you woke unable to breathe for Alm clutching you close and sobbing into your hair, and the first glimpse you had of your friends on the other side of that last locked door in the castle treasury—each one of them ready to die for you again if need be, ready to kill a mad god by your side, as though all the little betrayals by which you led them here had never happened. You’ve never had dreams of being hailed as a hero, but perhaps the least you can do to honor the Mother’s memory is remember her warnings about the temptation to feel undeserving.

Now you are traveling back the way Alm came, along the roads leading south from Rigel Castle, because he is insisting there’s no need to rush things. No weddings, no coronations, nothing he will allow to be done in haste and without thought, when the big question you must all now answer is the question of what kind of world you will all build together. He will not let anyone harry you with smaller, less consequential questions.

And so it is that your joined armies make their slow and weary way down over the land, and you get to see how little everything has changed yet. A merchant tries to cheat you from time to time in the marketplaces. The village women ask you for remedies for their sick children, and you take generously from your own supplies—lemon balm for fever, rosemary and thyme for pain. You can barely tell that what happened here was the end of the age of the gods, when all around people are still going about as they always have, stumbling, rising up. Finding ways to live.

As you journey, you make your reconciliations where you can.

Against all your expectations, Saber had made it easiest for you, for all your fear of his anger and all his talk of demanding your trust. You had gone up to him first after the dust had settled, and he had let you say barely two words before he took you by the shoulders, squeezing firmly.

 _We know you were thinking of us, lass,_ he said, and sent you on your way, heels of your palms pressed to your eyes to keep the tears in, knees shaking from gratitude. You had been afraid he would embrace you, and you are certain even now that that would have been too much to bear; you would have fallen to pieces right there and then, unable to go on.

Boey had been harder. He had caught your hands in the cage of his own and not let go until he had wrung a promise from you—a real one this time, on your name and on your mother’s name and on the royal house of Zofia, that you would never throw your life away again. _Never. Never again. Promise, milady._ But even that had been easier than Conrad, for whom you barely even had any words; only the tears that you had been working so hard to contain, streaming down both your faces while you clutched each other and sobbed so hard you could barely stand up.

The only one you cannot quite reach is Mae, who for days now has been insisting that nothing is wrong, and yet you know there must be, for the way she tiptoes around you and has been ever since you took the road again. Her laugh these days is just a little too loud, her eyes just a little too bright, her mouth too quick in its denials: _I’m fine, Celica!_ And you know as well as you know her that Mae is not fine, but that doesn’t mean that you necessarily know what to do about this. Part of you is honestly impatient this is not easier for you, after you helped save the world.

Of course you also know that is exactly where the challenge lies. Saving the world was for everyone. This question of you and Mae however is one you must answer for yourself, and for her, and that is the end of it; no wonder you find it so difficult.

“Here you are.” Alm spends his nights reading alone in the war room tent. When you notice his candle is drowning, you bring him in a new one—because old habits die hard, and you’re still learning your way around this business of finding purpose in things other than what you can do for someone else.

He looks up at you and smiles, warm in the candlelight. “Thanks, Celica. I couldn’t figure out if my light was starting to go, or if I’m just that bad a reader.” His smile turns wry, and he closes the tome in his lap. “I’m so glad it’s you. I was worried it’d be Clive or Grandfather again; they’re really breathing down my neck about this whole king business.”

You shoot him what you hope is a sympathetic look and sit down across the table. Unlike you, Alm will talk candidly about whatever it is he feels as soon as he thinks he is ready; this is far from the first evening you’ve listened to him complain about how little he knows, how much there is still to study about the history of the two kingdoms, about agriculture, about strategy. You are aware, likewise, of the parts the two of you don’t touch—the long meetings he has with his generals in this tent that keep him busy for most of the afternoon, the times he and Mycen withdraw to one side and speak tensely to one another of things he cannot tell you yet. Sometimes when you pass each other on the many errands that take each of you around the camp and back again, when he thinks he’s walking too fast for you to notice, you will see a quiet, persistent sorrow lingering in his eyes and in the bend of his back.

You have faith in Alm. You know this is his part of the story, and that he too is searching, carving out his own way slowly, step by step.

“Do you want to be king, Alm?”

“Well, honestly, all I want is to be myself.” It’s a relief to see that the question doesn’t catch him off guard, and that the answer he has for you is as truthful as anything else he’s ever told you. “I’m sure Mila would have wanted that for the both of us.”

You both know this is, in many ways, the hardest battle of all. At times as you go about your business in the towns and in the camp your mother’s circlet seems to press down heavy on your head, squeezing your skull. No one seems able to stop talking about how young you are. All these years you have worked so hard to grow up, but here at the end of all things you wonder if you could do worse than simply accept it. You _are_ young, and you have so much to learn yet. So much to resolve before the rest of your life can begin.

Alm reaches through the maze of books and rolled-up maps and touches your wrist. “You do whatever you need to be all right, okay? I’ll always be on your side.”

He would have made a fine king. You hope this will be the kind of world where that sincerity will be enough to see him safe wherever he goes. On the other end of that hope, you promise to make it so.

 

* * *

 

**xi.**

Dusk is falling when your forces finish setting up your final campsite on the Zofian border, and in the warm red light of almost-home there are two things waiting for you: a conversation you do not yet know how to have, and a patch of daisies growing by the side of the road.

You find Mae squatting in the grass, staring at them in fascination. They are the first flowers you have stopped to look at since the start of the war, and she is so lost in her contemplation of them she jumps when you hunch down beside her with your elbows braced against your knees.

For a moment you are afraid she’ll stand up and walk away from you, but she rallies. The smile she greets you with is almost shy. “Feels like it’s been forever since I last saw something bloom.”

You take this for a good sign. “I was wondering if I could talk to you.”

The way she looks at you then makes your heart turn over—wide-eyed, hesitating. You fear, again, that you’ve said something to make her want to bolt. But you know now that you’ve come too far to turn back, and you owe her this. Moreover, you owe yourself this.

“Yeah, sure,” she says, finally.

Together you stand up and set off together into the field that rambles downward off the path, and then with a deep breath you catapult yourself straight into what might well be the most difficult conversation of your life.

“I owe you an apology.”

Mae looks half about to deny it. She realizes almost immediately that there’s no point, settles, and instead asks, “What for?” and you feel the question open a floodgate.

“I should have let you be there for me. All these years you’ve been there, and stayed there, and I always told myself I never deserved it because I’m not good, Mae, I’m not good like you, I’m not even good like you think I am, and when I died Mila told me I’d been wrong to think I was alone all this time and I think part of me has always known I wasn’t, deep down, but you know it’s different when—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Celica.” She takes your hand to steady you, though the ground is firm and even and there’s no danger of you falling down. “Don’t forget to breathe.”

You stop walking to obey, drawing a breath in and holding it, releasing it long and slow. You stand together like that a while in silence, the soft grass growing high about your ankles. When you are calm again she asks, “Can you repeat that last part?”—soft, a little incredulous, like she cannot believe what you are telling her. Or maybe it’s simply that she cannot believe you are here.

You realize there is no other way to say it. “I was _dead,_ Mae. But then I remembered you, and I wanted to live.”

It’s not even a quarter of all the things you want to stay. There’s still the rest of the story, and the throne, and the island; there’s still the terror that hearing the whole truth from you will scare her so badly she will leave your side and never look back. But then you remember it was Mae who reached out for you just now and has not let go, and her grip is the steady earth you stand on.

“Did I ever tell you how I ended up saying yes to this whole protector deal?”

 _Because Nomah told you to, because you and Boey were his best students, because you saw that I was lonely and you felt sorry for me._ There is any number of reasons you can name, but you’ve learned not to put words in her mouth, so you wait, settling into the knowledge that the hardest part of loving someone is not being able to choose how they love you back.

“Nomah told us about you maybe a month before you came. He said you were a princess and that you were hiding from people who were trying to kill you, and you’d need people to look after you until the day you were ready to—to take your throne. To be a princess again, or a queen or whatever.” Her eyes are far away, as if she’s talking not to you but to herself, and she begins to swing your linked hands back and forth at the memory. “I thought it was super cool, so I said yes. I wasn’t even scared. Then the day your ship came in—I don’t know if you remember, the day you came, I was up on the wall watching for you. I couldn’t sleep all the night before because I was so excited, but it wasn’t real until I saw you coming up the road, on Sir Mycen’s horse, in that big cloak, and you looked up at me, and I—” She pauses. Bites her lip and looks at you sidelong, her eyes shining, her cheeks pink. “I don’t know, I just knew. I ran to Nomah then and there and told you I would do anything for you until you became queen, and even after that, forever.

“So I guess it was because I wanted to. That’s it.” Another pause, a breath. “No big reasons.”

Maybe not, you want to tell her, but maybe that’s the point. No big reasons. Maybe the wanting is everything; maybe the choice is everything.

“Do you still want to?”

“I’ll always want to.” She squeezes your hand. The word _always_ is so easy for her in ways it’s never been for you, and today, you cannot be anything but glad. “Do _you?_ ”

Your answer is to pull her toward you hard and fast and hold her, and this time you do not let her go.

 

* * *

 

**xii.**

“Cripes, my saddle sores are  _awful.”_ Mae stretches and cracks one eye open to peer at you, rubbing the cricks out of her lower back with her hands. “I’m gonna be bowlegged for a year.”

Mycen had insisted you go mounted the last of the way, so the people could more easily recognize your victory for what it was, and so had had the men requisition some horses for you at the border town. It had been all the same to you, and to Alm; you see him now in the distance, riding among the men—his brothers-in-arms, his friends, laughing and talking together in easy voices. Closer at hand is Saber, Genny behind Boey on the back of the mildest-mannered old gelding in the kingdom, Conrad unmasked and beaming in the sun. Everyone you love ranged row on row, an army with its banners raised.

And then there is Mae, by your side, complaining about saddle sores.

“It won’t be long now,” you say, sympathetic.

“Guess not. At least we can enjoy the view.” She points, grinning, and you see it immediately. The road winds downhill toward the castle town, the grassy swathes on either side of it all green and shining and studded with daisies.

You see, the thing about daisies is that they bloom everywhere, in fields and by roadsides, in sun and shade and rain. There is no surer sign the land is even just that little bit fit for growing things, and already you can feel it, the ground whole and holy beneath your feet, the good earth all around you coming back to life.

“Like a sky full of stars,” says Mae, and laughs, and that is when you know—soon it will be spring.


End file.
